STOREWAY SOLUTION CENTER
SOLUTIONS
Opened at the end of 2008, Bull’s StoreWay Solution Center offers private and public sector organizations a unique live environment in which to discover and explore storage solutions that Bull has designed around EMC technologies.
The creation of the StoreWay Solution Center has marked a new step in the close relationship that Bull and EMC have developed over 15 years. During this time, Bull has deployed an impressive number of storage solutions based on EMC technologies, throughout the world.
Since 2007, Bull has been a member of EMC’s Velocity Partner Program, as a Velocity Signature Partner – testifying its expertise as a storage infrastructure and information management integrator with a European network of over 400 experts.
“Drawing on the success of its own centers in Cork (Ireland) and Hopkinton (MA, USA), EMC strongly encourages its partners to develop centers of this type, and then actively supports them in this approach,” explained Frédéric Fimes, Channel Manager for EMC France. “In the interactive environment of its StoreWay Solution Center, Bull demonstrates the value of its expertise by presenting its customers with solutions geared to solving today’s information management challenges which integrate both EMC and Bull technologies, rather than just a series of disparate products.”
THREE KEY OBJECTIVES
Located at the Bull site in Grenoble, France, which also houses Bull’s Center of Expertise and Services, the StoreWay Solution Center has three key objectives, and has already successfully met the needs of hundreds of customers, enabling them to:
Keep abreast of the major trends in storage, and discover Bull-EMC solutions 'in-situ'
Learn about the solutions, architectures and technologies showcased at the Center
Design, test and validate their own solutions.
The StoreWay Solution Center is a European resource, accessible to both Bull and EMC customers. Welcoming international visitors, it is also used remotely for demonstrations and workshops in different countries. As well as experiencing live demonstrations of state-of-the-art technologies in the StoreWay Solution Center , visitors can consult a team of experts and consultants with skills covering every area of storage: from information management to infrastructure virtualization. This rich resource is especially valuable to customers looking for precise answers to their questions, there and then: whether these are related to the specific characteristics of their IT environment, or to the technologies they are thinking about implementing.
RESPONDING TO CUSTOMERS' PRIORITIES
To validate the strategy behind the StoreWay Solution Center, Bull commissioned IDC to carry out a survey which examined the data storage challenges faced by European companies. As part of this study, IDC interviewed 100 major European accounts in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, and UK. One of the aims of the survey was to define the solutions and areas, which the StoreWay Solution Center should focus on from the time it first opened, in order to respond fully to the concerns and problems of private and public sector organizations.
While managing the huge increase in data volumes resulting from the explosion in messaging systems is a concern highlighted by 64% of the businesses interviewed, for the overwhelming majority (89%) the number one priority when it comes to storage is to guarantee business continuity in the event of a failure or an incident. It is worth noting that all respondents have made provisions to cope with incidents or failures (including Disaster Recovery Plans, data back-up and archiving). The effectiveness of these measures has not, however, been fully tried and tested: 57% of businesses believe their current storage policy would not enable them to cope with a major breakdown in their information system.
“The StoreWay Solution Center developed in partnership with EMC is a valuable resource allowing our customers to understand and evaluate the very best storage solutions available on the market today, in order to accelerate their deployment within their own organizations to maximize efficiency of the data management infrastructure in line with their new business challenges.” added Benoit Hallez, Director of Bull’s storage business.
Guided by the customer priorities highlighted by the IDC survey, the StoreWay Solution Center decided in the first instance to focus on:
- Disaster Recovery, with a solution based on EMC CLARiiON, EMC MirrorView and VMware Site Recovery Manager
- Protection of application data, with the EMC Replication Manager software
- Archiving of emails, with a solution that combines Bull’s StoreWay Calypso software suite, and the EMC Centera storage array.
These key themes and the content of the demonstrations are regularly reviewed and updated to keep in step with customers’ changing priorities, as well as new products from EMC. With the support of the experts at the Solutions Center, Bull also offers seminars and bespoke workshops that are totally dedicated to particular customers and their projects.
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